


The Victor's Wife

by lesbianophelia



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Victor Peta, community home Katniss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2209791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianophelia/pseuds/lesbianophelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No. She doesn’t love him. Can’t. Shouldn’t. She’s only his wife, after all. But sometimes, when she really gets to thinking about it, she realizes that she could. (Alternate Canon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Victor's Wife

The first time she actually speaks to Peeta Mellark is during Community Home Day. A day she’s been dreading all year long — was there really a time when the tour of the mines was the worst part of Career Week? — where her classmates all tour the Community Home and choose a child to spend the afternoon talking with.   
  
It’s horrible enough, seeing all of the kids glance around and make little comments to themselves, but nothing it quite as bad as it is when Whitley Donner cups his hands around his mouth. “Miss Matheson!” he calls. “Who gets to pick Katniss as their kid?”   
  
Almost everyone in the class laughs, even if it’s just a poorly stifled titter. Almost. Peeta Mellark doesn’t. In fact, his hands ball into fists at his sides, and before Katniss can even really comprehend what’s happening, he’s speaking, voice loud and clear.   
  
“That isn’t funny.”  
  
It’s quiet. Town kids don’t stand up for  _Seam_ kids, let alone a  _Community Home kid_ like Katniss.   
  
“Apologize,” Peeta Mellark commands, looking right at the boy Katniss had been sure was his friend. “ _Apologize,_ ” he insists. The other boy mumbles something that might be  _sorry, Katniss_ , if she was close enough to hear it. She wishes that he had left it alone. This will be all anyone can talk about for at least a couple of days. She could have handled being laughed at better than she can handle knowing that Peeta Mellark is being gossiped about because of _her_.   
  
He talks to Delly Cartwright for a little while, and then when the teacher recovers enough to ask everyone to split off into pairs, she’s surprised when he steps away from the shoemaker’s daughter and heads over to her.   
  
“Hey,” he says, as if this isn’t the first time they’ve ever spoken. “Do you want to team up?”   
  
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, the words tumbling out without her permission. “They’re all gonna talk about you, now.”   
  
“I don’t mind,” he says, one corner of his mouth tilting up into a smile. “Do you wanna team up?”   
  
“Why me?”   
  
“Well, apparently, all my friends are dicks,” he says. “And Delly wants to go with Thom. And I want my partner to take it seriously. What do you say?”   
  
“Oh,” she says. “Um, okay.”   
  
He beams at her.

Usually, this is the worst day, placed midway between the tour of the mines and the afternoon in the shop of whichever merchant was selected. Katniss thinks of it as a warning. One that she and her sister are prominently featured in.

_See what will become of you it your parents die? See how grateful you should be for your life? Look how fortunate you are, starving to death in your own home._

The idea is simple enough. The class is supposed to team up, and each pair is to spend the afternoon talking to one of the children. She usually ends up sitting in silence with a kid from the Seam that no one else picked. Or, well, the Seam kid picks  _her_. The point is supposed to be so that you can see what it would be like to work with the kids. Katniss always saw it — especially once they lived there — as more of a cautionary tale than anything. A warning.  _Look what we can do to your siblings. Your children. If your parents die, this is what you will be reduced to_.

  
  
This one is actually not the worst. Peeta sits across from Prim and tries to make small talk. It doesn’t work, of course. Katniss is one of the only people left in the world who can coax a response out of her sister. She knew the Community Home would crush her like a bug. But there were no other options, really.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” he says at the end of the day, offering her a shy little smile. She does see him around after that, seemingly everywhere she looks. But they don’t speak. She just accepts the smiles he tosses her way.   
  
  
  
  
Katniss had been terrified of the Community Home when she was small. She didn’t know what it was – and her father wouldn’t tell her, just that it was  _nothing she had to worry about_ – but the house itself is intimidating. Too big to be considered a part of the Seam, and too run down to be part of Town, tall and built with dark, old wood that looks like it might collapse at any given moment.

Her father was wrong to tell her not to worry about it. After the mines exploded, and her mother became nearly catatonic with grief, ending up in the Community Home was nearly all she  _could_ worry about. When Peeta Mellark’s gift of burnt bread and all of the dandelions that she and Prim could pick weren’t enough to sustain them.

  
  
  
  
Peeta doesn’t ask if she wants to pair up the next year. Instead, he just comes and stands beside her. Another group already took Prim — two Town kids that have hated Katniss more than usual this past year — so they end up sitting in front of a girl that Katniss only vaguely knows. She’s a friend of Prim’s. Or, as close to a friend as Prim can have.   
  
  
They get Prim again the next year. Peeta finally addresses Katniss directly, after a few failed attempts at conversation.   
  
“She doesn’t talk much, does she?”   
  
She shakes her head. “She used to,” she whispers. “That’s why I’m getting her out of here as soon as I turn eighteen.”   
  
“They’ll let you get custody even if you aren’t married?” Peeta asks. She scowls. She hadn’t really thought it out that far in advance. “Sorry. Just wondering.”   
  
“I don’t know.”   
  
“Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”   
  
  
They don’t have a Community Home Day the next year. They don’t do much of anything in school, save for watch the Games and fill out the quizzes so that the Capitol can be sure that they’re spending enough time watching Peeta Mellark compete.   
  
He’s getting further than anyone thought he would. Katniss thinks about what a waste it is, him being reaped at seventeen. He was so close to being out of the ball, but that didn’t end up mattering.   
  
To make matters worse, no one in the Capitol seems to be rooting for him. It’s not that they  _dislike_ him, exactly. It’s just that he’s in direct competition with the hulking boy from Two that confessed his love for his District Partner the night before the Games. It’s a Quarter Quell, and the Capitol is in love with their couple. So they underestimate Peeta.   
  
The boy from Eleven dies when he gets caught in a  _wildfire_  not even a full day after he kills the girl. Katniss is concerned when it comes down to Peeta and Cato, but he surprises everyone with his skills in hand-to-hand combat, and comes out as the Victor. And it’s too late, really, for the Capitol to anything in retaliation. So he’s heralded as a hero for the next week in the Capitol, even though they play specials with commentaries about Cato and Clove’s love story and how  _tragic_ it was. She doesn’t think that the Capitol has ever mourned a tribute before.   
  
She’s heard plenty of people in Twelve say that they could  _spot a Community Home kid from a mile away_. And it’s not like they were  _wrong_. There is a certain sadness in their eyes. In the way their shoulders hunch forward when they walk. No one has ever cared about the Community Home until he wins.

It was a good thing, Peeta winning the Games. Not only because Katniss didn’t _want_ to watch the boy with the bread die, but also because, even if the Capitol isn’t head over heels in love with him, they’re giving the whole district food for his efforts.

Now that District Twelve had produced someone of  _value_  again for the first time in nearly twenty five years, it would appear that even the orphans mean something.

  
  
It’s only a couple of weeks after his homecoming that the boxes start to arrive at the Community Home, in addition to the Parcel Day and Tessera rations. They’re unmarked, and filled with fruit and vegetables — fresh, frozen and canned — and _meat_ and bedspreads and even things that they don’t  _need_ to survive. Like toys. And baked goods. Bread, rolls,  _cookies_.

Katniss only knows about some of the stuff because she was around while it was being rationed out, once. They didn’t realize. Or, at least, they must not have. The workers took the majority of the baked goods. But that didn’t matter. Because they were finally able to have good meals. Katniss was finally able to feel like a little bit less of a failure for ending up there.

  
  
For the most part, Peeta Mellark was left alone. He wasn’t permitted to rejoin the class to complete his schooling, and, after the Victory Tour, everything was about the next Games.   
After he gets back from the Capitol from his first year of mentoring — two Seam kids, this year, who Katniss didn’t know and who both died within the first couple of days — he comes to visit the Community Home.   
  
No one knows exactly what to make of him. Prim spends a lot of her time talking quietly with the other kids and looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He is the blondest thing to be in the Community Home since Prim started, and his hair is glossy. No doubt from the fancy shampoo he uses.   
  
It is Katniss that he approaches. He wets his lips before he speaks, and vaguely, she thinks that she’s never seen him so nervous before.   
  
“Hey,” he says.   
  
“Hello,” she returns. “Is there … can I help you with something?”   
  
“You might be able to say that. Is there somewhere we could talk?”   
  
 _No_. “About what?”   
  
He glances around. “It’s a little strange. I don’t want to embarrass you. But it’s good, I promise. Or, well, I  _hope_.”   
  
She should trust him. They were relatively close to becoming friends before the Reaping, and if she had the option, she might have even gone to see him off. But she didn’t.   
  
“Come with me,” she says, rising unsteadily and leading him to a supply closet. It’s the closest one can really get to  _privacy_ here, and she’s fairly certain that you can’t deny a victor if he wants to talk to you.   
  
He leans back against the door once they’re in there. “Cozy,” he jokes.   
  
“What?” she asks. “You said you wanted to talk.”   
  
“Oh, right. I have a proposition for you,” he says, and then sort of shakes his head. “The one time  _proposal_ would have been the right word … um, you just had your birthday, right?”   
  
She nods.   
  
“So you’re eighteen?” he continues, and she nods again. “Um, well, I was at the Justice Building earlier, trying to see what it would take to get you and your sister released from here.”   
  
Her stomach starts to do funny little flops. “What? Why?”   
  
He doesn’t answer. “Um, they told me I couldn’t get either of you out. I would have to be Prim’s legal guardian — since she’s under eighteen — and in order to get the rights to do that, I’ve gotta be married. Which sort of made me think, you know … if you want to get out of here …”   
  
“What?” she asks again. “Are you … Are you saying that you want to  _marry_ me?”   
  
“To get you out here,” he explains. “I wouldn’t expect anything …  _more_ … I would just … you could stay with me. Both of you. In the Victor’s Village. It’s a huge house, and … I didn’t work out my speech past that.”    
  
“Nothing else?” she asks. She shouldn’t even be  _considering_ this, but he is offering to get her — and  _Prim_ , more importantly — out of the Community Home. Together. “Why? Why would you do this for me?”   
  
“It’s for her, too,” he says.   
  
For Prim. She could do this for Prim, right? She could do anything, if it meant getting Prim out of here.   
  
“You don’t have to say yes today,” he assures her. “I’ll be back — does next Saturday work? And if you don’t want to, then don’t. But if you do … I’ll be here.”   
  
“You’ve thought about this,” she accuses. He nods.   
  
“Ever since I got home … and … before.”   
  
“I can’t ask you to …” she trails off. He shakes his head.   
  
“You’re not. Remember? My idea, completely.”   
  
She’s a little bit relieved that she never had the chance to sell her mother’s old worn dress. There’s a patch on the side, where it ripped along the seam, but the blue is at least close to being the same shade.

She still feels silly when she puts it on. And when she tries to pull her hair into some semblance of a fancy style. But she’s not practiced at it, and Peeta  _did_ say he didn’t expect for her to do too much of the  _wifely_ things. So she puts it in her normal braid, lies down on the bed she’s shared with Prim for years, and chides herself for being enough of a fool to convince herself he was actually coming.

That’s exactly why she didn’t tell Prim what was happening. She wrote a note out, but she didn’t put it out yet. And she’s about to tear it up. She’s just ready to change when she’s called to the front.

“Katniss, you have a visitor.”

She tries not to get her hopes up — again — when she goes to the front, but her visitor is Peeta. Of  _course_ her visitor is Peeta. She all but throws herself at him, and she tries to remind herself to hold it together, but that’s no use, of course. She’s laughing and crying all at the same time, and Peeta just holds onto her.

“You came,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course I did. Is this something you wanna do?”

“If you do,” she whispers, holding up the bag she grabbed at the last second.

“Come on. Let’s get you signed out,” Peeta suggests, and that’s when she leaves the note for Prim. “I asked this morning, before I came here. We’ll have to come back for her tomorrow.”

  
  
  
  
If the Community Home was darkness, then Peeta’s house in the Victor’s Village is all light. White doors and window frames, pristine, intricate molding where the wall meets the ceiling. Light fixtures that radiate light from all angles in every room, along with floor lamps and candles in holders. There are two chimneys outside, and she spots the first one when they walk into the – gigantic – living room and wonders somewhere in the back of her mind where the other one is.

Peeta leans against the wall, supporting himself with one hand while he uses one foot to kick a shoe off of the other. She looks down at her father’s boots. He must want her to take them off, then. Of course, he would. They’re filthy. She’s just kneeling down to take them off when he speaks.

“Well, um, welcome home,” he says shyly. “You don’t have to take those off if you don’t want. I’m not afraid of getting the carpet dirty. I just prefer to be barefooted when I can.”

She’s afraid enough of getting the carpet dirty for the both of them. She takes them off and pretends she doesn’t notice the way he looks at her blistered feet.

 

He made her a cake. That’s what she notices when he leads her through the kitchen, and she stops dead in her tracks at the sight of the white, frosted thing on the counter. It’s  _covered_ in flowers of all different sorts that she doesn’t even recognize.

“Oh,” he says when he catches her looking at it. “I couldn’t sleep last night. Not well, at least. So I figured I might as well put myself to use.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

“We’ll cut into it after dinner,” he promises, and then hesitates. “Or right now, if you want. I mean, it is your day, right?”

Her cheeks are so hot that she can’t even stand to look at him. “Um, I can wait. Thank you.”  
  
  
  
“So, this one is your room,” Peeta says, pushing a door upstairs open. Her breath catches in her throat, because if there was  _ever_ a room that should belong to her sister, it would be this one.

Light yellow walls with the same white accents that the other rooms have had. A faded quilt with sunflowers printed onto it. A full length mirror on a stand, reflecting the corner of the room that they’re standing in right back at them.

“Prim will be right next door,” he continues, and she deflates a little when she realizes that she won’t be sharing with her sister.  _Of course_ Peeta wouldn’t be content to just give them the least that he could get away with. “And I’m just beside that room.”

“Can I switch with her?” she asks, and Peeta looks almost disappointed for a second, but recovers admirably.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Um, it won’t be as big, though.”

“That’s fine!” she assures him. “This room is … I think it’s bigger than the one everyone shared. Much cleaner. But more space than I need, for sure. And Prim would love the blankets.”

He smiles at her. “Okay. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what sort of things either of you would like. I have a catalogue, and you can pick out whatever you’d like – the both of you, I mean – and I’ll have it sent on the next train.”

She thanks him, but she resolves to  _not_ ask him for anything again. Not ever. He shows her the next room – which is smaller but not by too much – and apologizes for the fact that it’s so plain. But the white walls are sort of nice, even if the cleanness of the white comforter is unsettling. She fiddles with the ring he gave her this afternoon while she looks around the room.

  
  
“Do you need help with dinner?” she asks when they get back to the kitchen. He shakes his head.

“Like I said, I couldn’t sleep last night. Or this morning. So, ah, everything is pretty much ready. I just have to heat it up,” he says, and she takes a seat at the high counter that looks in on the kitchen. “What can I get you to drink, Katniss? Water? Tea? Coffee? I have some juice, too. Orange, I think. And apple. Oh! And Hot Chocolate,” he continues. It’s almost amusing that he’s so nervous, but then again, she’s nervous, too.

“Water would be good,” she says. “I can get it if you tell me where your glasses are.”

  
  
“This is great,” she says, and it’s all she can really get out, because she’s never been faced with this much food before in her life and she’s planning on putting as much of it away as possible.

“Well, I had plenty of time to learn to cook, you know.”

“Yeah,” she says. It isn’t all that often that the Capitol gets a Victor that they aren’t obsessed with. One that’s allowed to live out their life in relative peace. Annie Cresta, for instance, but she got out of it by having — or maybe faking — mental issues after she saw her district partner get beheaded.

But Peeta is one of them. They eat in silence, for the most part. It’s a good thing he doesn’t expect her to be much for conversation, because she’s  _starved_ and she’s never been faced with such a huge meal before in her life.

He must realize that. But he doesn’t say anything, so she doesn’t, either.

But she is willing to tell him that she’s never eaten cake like this before.

“I’ll make them for you all the time,” he says. “Whenever you want one. Even when you don’t.” He gives her a smile that goes up higher on one side of the his face than the other. “I’ll make you so much stuff, Katniss. I won’t rest until you’re sick of it.”

“Oh,” she says, tugging at her braid. “Are you not still working in the bakery?”

“Not allowed to,” he says. “I might as well, though, with all the use this kitchen gets. Haymitch will love you if only for all of the bread you’ll keep him from having to eat.”

Prim doesn’t trust him. And what Katniss has done – abandoning her on a Saturday afternoon to go off and  _marry a victor_ – is all but unforgiveable.

Katniss doesn’t blame her sister for thanking Peeta for lunch and then shutting herself in her new room for the rest of the day when they return to the Victor’s Village.

Plenty of kids in the Community Home had nightmares. When Katniss hears groaning, she thinks that it must be Prim, but she cracks her sister’s door open and finds her sleeping soundly underneath the yellow blanket. And the noises aren’t half as loud as they were in her room. So she inches over towards Peeta’s room and finds him thrashing around in his bed.

Thinking quickly, she knocks at the door. Quietly at first, and then a little bit more urgently. It does the trick. He sits up, gasping a little bit, and takes a second to focus on her.

“Katniss,” he breathes. “Um, is there … is everything okay?”

She swallows hard. She’s never been a particularly good liar. “Do you have an extra blanket?” she asks. “My room is cold. I checked in the closet, but I didn’t want to go through the whole house. Sorry for waking you.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it,” he says, smiling at her. “Here, take this one,” he says standing up and folding up the identical white quilt off of his bed. “There’s, like, a thousand of these in the house. I’ll get one from the guest room.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. She can’t tell him that she doesn’t need one, because then he’ll know for a fact that she was lying, but she’ll look a liar if she’s suddenly willing to go through his house to get what she needs.

“Of course,” he gives her a weak little smile. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

She lies in her bed that night and listens for sounds that he’s having trouble, but none come. She doesn’t even feel guilty about it when she pulls the quilt he gave her up over herself and feels the trace of his body heat left in the fabric.

Over the next week, she keeps coming up with new things to tell him she needs when she hears him through the wall.  _A glass of water, only she’s not sure how to get the ice. Help turning the ceiling fan on. Answers to her questions about his strange showers._ When she gets a little bit more adjusted, it gets harder. And besides, he seems to think it’s at least a little bit strange that she wants to know how to adjust the settings on the shower at three in the morning.

She sits on the end of his bed and surprises herself by telling the truth one night, when she can’t come up with any problems. “I think Prim hates me for doing this.”

He shakes his head. “No. She’s just confused. She probably thinks we’ve been planning this for a while.”

“Well, you sort of have,” she says, and he laughs.

“Yeah. I guess. But … I think she just needs some more time. She’s been going to school. And eating with us. I’m not sure what else we could ask for.”

“Conversation, maybe,” she says, and then sighs. “Though, you know. I’m clearly  _so good_ on that front.”

“No. You’re better than most of the people that have bothered talking to me since I got back. Gives me an excuse to ignore my escort when she calls.”

He’s lonely. Well, at least that would help to explain why he was so willing to open his home up to her and her sister. “Why didn’t you make it obvious you were the one leaving the boxes?” she asks, turning to look at him.

“First of all, I’m not entirely sure it’s legal, using my winnings that way,” he says softly. “But with that aside, I didn’t know if you’d accept it. Felt like the sort of thing you might hate.”

“But we could’ve been friends, first,” she argues, even though she knows that it’s pointless. She doesn’t have any friends.

“Yeah, maybe,” he agrees, and she hears him yawning. She moves to get up, but she feels him shift. Feels a hand rest on the back of her arm. “You could stay. You know, if your room really gets that cold.”

She laughs, hoping to sound like she hasn’t been lying. “Um, yeah,” she says. “I guess … I could.”

“Of course, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” he continues, clearly nervous. But this is the most they’ve spoken since … well, ever. And she’s not entirely ready for it to end, so she lies back beside him and stares up at the ceiling.

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna be able to thank you,” she says.

“And I don’t think I’m ever gonna be able to convince you that you don’t have to,” he returns.

He doesn’t have a nightmare with her in the bed with him. And she doesn’t have one, either. For the first time in what must have been years. She swells with pride at the realization that she was able to help him when she wakes up and he’s still fast asleep.

Maybe that’s how she can thank him. She never entertained the notion that she would be any good at being a housewife, and Peeta certainly seems to have all of the cooking and baking covered, but maybe there’s more she can do. Starting with the laundry. He keeps it all in a hamper beside a fancy machine, but she doesn’t know how to work it, and it won’t be a surprise if she asks him how to do it. So she sneaks out of the bed, gets dressed, and finds his laundry, a bucket, and some soap.

She sits out in the yard and scrubs out the clothes as well she as she can. Some women in the Seam make a living this way. She’s seen their hands, rough from years of work. The jug of  _laundry soap_ she found isn’t half as harsh as what they use, though. And much more perfumed. Maybe, if her hands looked like that, she would feel like she earned her keep here.

He has a clothesline, thankfully. She hangs the garments up once they’ve been rinsed well enough, and it’s a little bit jarring to see her old clothing beside his new, fancy, Capitol wardrobe. She turns to face the house, pleased with herself, and sees only a glimpse of Peeta while he watches her from the kitchen window. He’s gone so quickly that she’s sure she’s made it up.

Prim’s cheekbones start to fill out. And so do hers, for that matter. She stares at herself in the mirror for a very long moment on the day that marks three weeks since they signed at the Justice Building, and while the physical change isn’t  _too_ drastic, yet, there’s something different about her appearance. Something brighter in her eyes. Something that makes her hair a little shinier. Her back a little bit straighter.

She keeps on top of the laundry. And the dishes, when she can beat him to it. Her favorite day, by far, is when she washes all of the sheets in the house. Once she’s finished hanging them up to dry, she sits down on the ground, picks dandelions and watches the fabric while it blows in the wind. Sometimes, she gets an incredible urge to sneak off to the woods, but she’s not sure if that would get Peeta in trouble, so she doesn’t.   
  
Peeta keeps all the windows in the house open on nice days, and she can hear him moving around in the kitchen. Cooking something for dinner, probably. He always has the biggest meals waiting for Prim when she gets home.

“Hey, thanks for getting the sheets,” Peeta says when she – finally – comes back in. “Sure looks pretty out there with all of them floating around like that.”

She feels a little embarrassed. He’s thanked her for doing the laundry before, but she feels nearly certain, now, that she really did see him that first day. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know how to work your machines.”

“I’m starting to like the way they feel from the sun,” he says. “And they smell better, too.”

“The soap is weird,” she says.

He laughs. “Everything is weird here. If you want to go buy some real soap, feel free to. Just let me know and I’ll send some money with you.”

“No, it’s okay,” she says. “I learned how to use it.”

He grins. While they wait for the casserole to bake, she finds a basket of yarn underneath the coffee table in his living room.

“You knit?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “Came with the house.”

“Oh.”

“Do you?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “My mother did, once. I remember. She made me this blanket,” she holds her arms out to illustrate the fact that it was only really a couple of feet long. “It was when I was a baby. All different colors of yarn, woven together. She kept going until she ran out. Then my father would buy her more, and she’d pick right back up where she left off.”

It’s been  _years_ since she talked about her mother. Or even thought about the baby blanket.

“If you want to learn, there’s a book around here somewhere.  _Intro to Knitting_ , or something like that.”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t want anything to do with her mother, really. And that includes knitting. “Thank you, though.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course. What’s mine is yours.”

It’s a silly thought, a victor saying that to a Community Home girl.

She doesn’t love him. That’s not what this is. Not what  _any_ of this is. This is him helping her. Throwing his life away for her sake, really, in an act of charity that she would have –  _should_ have – refused if she had any other choice.

She doesn’t. She doesn’t love him. And he doesn’t love her. He couldn’t. But sometimes, when she’s lying in his bed in the mornings, watching him stir from a dream that isn’t quite a nightmare yet, she thinks of kissing him on the forehead. Or worse, on his lips.

She spends a disproportionate amount of time wondering what it would be like, how he would react, if she would just take his face in her hands and kiss him. Would he kiss her back? What would it even feel like for a boy to kiss you back? Or to kiss a boy for that matter? For a girl that wears a wedding ring, she is very inexperienced when it comes to this sort of thing. But there was never any time for dating.

She wonders if Peeta dated. There were always a lot of girls in his social circle at school. Girls like Delly Cartwright and the Donner girl, whose name she can never remember. Girls that always spent way too much time staring at her at school.

No. She doesn’t love him. Can’t. Shouldn’t. She’s only his  _wife_ , after all. But sometimes, when she really gets to thinking about it, she realizes that she _could_.

She could love him, maybe. If she could figure out what all that would entail. All she knows – all she really knows – is that her mother loved her father. And that certainly didn’t do her much good. Not when he died and left her an empty shell of a person.

But Katniss could do some of it, at least. Like waking him with kisses. Or cutting his hair for him. Helping him to cook dinner. Listening to stories about his childhood. Sleeping closer than a foot away from him in the bed at night.

  
  
  
“My family wants to meet you,” Peeta announces at lunch one day. Prim is at school while they eat lunch, and she’s glad, because she’s only just starting to ease her sister out of her shell, and something like this might knock her back a few steps.

“Why?”

“Well, I mean, we are married,” he reminds her. “But we don’t have to go. They’re just curious. Probably want to know what to think about all the gossip.”

“Oh,” she says. It’s been a little over a month, now, and she’s gone on walks around the district – to the meadow, to the hob, around Town to pick up groceries for Peeta – but the reality of the fact that they’re  _married_ has changed from a pressing, fearsome reality to just a simple thing that she could even forget from time to time. “They’ll probably hate me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them,” he says, shaking his head. “They’ll have to be on their best behavior. They’ve gotta stay on my good side, or else I might not sign over half my check to Mom next month.”

“You give her your money?” Katniss asks. “Is that why they didn’t move with you? You paid them to stay away?”

He laughs, but it’s a little bit dry. “No. No. It’s just … she didn’t wanna come. And if she wasn’t gonna come, no one was.”

“Why didn’t she?” she asks.

He chews on his bottom lip. “Guess it would’ve been embarrassing for her, or something. Living in her son’s house. I mean, it’s fine. I’m not here alone anymore, and while that’s increased my enjoyment of the house by about a thousand percent, I think it’s quality over quantity.”

They’re both startled by a bolt of thunder, and she swears, scraping her chair back against the floor in her haste to stand up. Sure enough, it’s started raining without either of them noticing it. Right on the sheets. She throws the door open and runs out to the yard, yanking down the fabric and pretending not to notice how cold it is.

“What are you doing?” Peeta calls. “You’ll freeze out there — come back inside before you get pneumonia.”

She doesn’t listen to him. Just keeps ripping the laundry down. This is her  _one_ job, and she’s ruined it. Tears prick at the backs of her eyes. One thing. She wanted to be able to do one nice thing for him. She feels strong arms wrap around her from behind, more dragging than guiding her away from the last set of sheets.

“It’s freezing out here,” Peeta says, and she just gathers the sheets against her chest. He sets her down inside the kitchen and presses a kiss against the top of her head. It’s the first real affection he’s shown her, and she can feel the warmth radiating from the spot his lips touched even though he’s right. It is freezing. “What were you thinking?” he asks.

“The sheets,” she says. “They’re soaked.”

“It’s not like we can’t fix it,” he says, a little bit too patiently. “It’ll just take a couple of loads. We’ll throw them in the dryer and they’ll be good as new.”

“Maybe, when the storm passes, I can bring them back out.”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” he says. “You’re soaked. What are you –”

That’s when she kisses him. The ball of sheets wet and gross, pressed between the two of them, keeping them a little bit more separated than she would like them to be. That’s what convinces her to drop them.

“You said you liked them better when I hung them outside,” she says when she pulls away. “So I was gonna hang them outside. But I didn’t realize it was going to storm. And I just …”

“You just kissed me,” he says, a little incredulous.

She nods. “Sorry.”

“No!” he says. “Never apologize for  _kissing_ me. I just didn’t figure you thought of me … that way.”

“I do,” she whispers, not looking at him. “And if you don’t, it’s fine. I know that this isn’t – that this marriage isn’t  _real_.”

“Let’s talk about real,” Peeta says, stepping across the pile of wet sheets, and taking a seat at the table. She sits across from him, because he’s clearly waiting on her, but refuses to look up at his face.

It’s just as well. He’s so nervous that he might stop if she says anything or even looks at him. He talks nervously. Says that he remembers her singing on the first day of class. That she was wearing a red plaid dress and that he had been a goner ever since. He talks about sitting beside her at Community Home day and wondering how to really talk to her. About how he thought she would laugh at him when he asked if this was something she’d be willing to do. About how _lucky_ he feels when she lies in bed with him at night.

“So … do you want to try … to make this real?” she asks, and he  _laughs_. Loud and long and so happily that there’s not even a moment where she thinks he’s laughing  _at_ her.

“Yes. Yes, please,” he says. “Please, please, please.”


End file.
